"A growing number of Afghan children are being coerced into a life of sexual abuse. The practice of wealthy or prominent Afghans exploiting underage boys as sexual partners who are often dressed up as women to dance at gatherings is on the rise in post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to Afghan human rights researchers, Western officials and men who participate in the abuse.
“Like it or not, there was better rule of law under the Taliban,” said Dee Brillenburg Wurth, a child-protection expert at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, who has sought to persuade the government to address the problem. “They saw it as a sin, and they stopped a lot of it.”
Over the past decade, the phenomenon has flourished in Pashtun areas in the south, in several northern provinces and even in the capital, according to Afghans who engage in the practice or have studied it. Although issues such as women’s rights and moral crimes have attracted a flood of donor aid and activism in recent years, bacha bazi remains poorly understood." Washpost
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It would be uninformed and naive to think that this practise has not been common in Afghanistan in the past.
Nevertheless, the comment in the article, “They saw it as a sin, and they stopped a lot of it.” should be taken seriously. Yes, the Taliban are medievalist obstacles to the well being of many, many Afghans but they were not all bad. You may want to remember that they cooperated with the USG in opium crop suppression and many of my contacts tell me that they offered to hand over Bin Laden's crew before we inviaded Afghanistan.
We should always try to remember that interfering in some other people's culture inevitably has unintended consequences. This is one of them. pl
